Structured Types

[rhino]

I've been looking at the information on Structured Types in the certifcation
guide and have previously read it in the DB2 manuals. As neat as Structured
Types are, I'm very curious to know if they are being heavily used in the
real world? Or are they just a "nice to have" feature that no one actually
uses?

I'm also curious to know if anyone is finding them dramatically better than
regular tables? If so, WHY are they finding the structured types so good?

--

Rhino

[Serge Rielau]

rhino wrote:

I've been looking at the information on Structured Types in the certifcation
guide and have previously read it in the DB2 manuals. As neat as Structured
Types are, I'm very curious to know if they are being heavily used in the
real world? Or are they just a "nice to have" feature that no one actually
uses?

If you ask me OO in RDBMS was a knew-jerk reaction to fend of OODBMS
(which, as well all know now remained niche products).
Teh only common usage scenarios in DB2 for structured types are the
spatial extenders.

I'm also curious to know if anyone is finding them dramatically better than
regular tables? If so, WHY are they finding the structured types so good?

I don't think you can compare structured types with tables. Unless you
mean typed tables vs. regular tables.
If anything I would compare structured types with XML.

Cheers
Serge
--
Serge Rielau
DB2 Solutions Development
IBM Toronto Lab

[Knut Stolze]

rhino wrote:

I've been looking at the information on Structured Types in the
certifcation guide and have previously read it in the DB2 manuals. As neat
as Structured Types are, I'm very curious to know if they are being
heavily used in the real world? Or are they just a "nice to have" feature
that no one actually uses?

I'm also curious to know if anyone is finding them dramatically better
than regular tables? If so, WHY are they finding the structured types so
good?

I think Serge already summed it up quite nicely. As a bit of background
information on the DB2 Spatial Extender: structured types were used in this
product to provide encapsulation for different pieces of geometries and
also to tie special spatial indexing mechanisms. (The indexing questions
could be solved in different ways, too.) Internally, the spatial data
types contain a BLOB in which all the geometry data is encoded.

I consider one thing as a really nice feature for structured types: if you
wrap a BLOB/CLOB into such a type, you can exploit the buffer pools for
small LOBs while really large objects are treated as always.

--
Knut Stolze
DB2 z/OS Utilities Development
IBM Germany

[Serge Rielau]

Knut Stolze wrote:

I consider one thing as a really nice feature for structured types: if you
wrap a BLOB/CLOB into such a type, you can exploit the buffer pools for
small LOBs while really large objects are treated as always.

True... but that's hardly an OO feature. After fixing blocking and DRDA
inlining for LOBs in DB2 9.5 there's hope this OO advantage's days are
numbered.

Cheers
Serge
--
Serge Rielau
DB2 Solutions Development
IBM Toronto Lab

[Knut Stolze]

Serge Rielau wrote:

Knut Stolze wrote:

>I consider one thing as a really nice feature for structured types: if
you wrap a BLOB/CLOB into such a type, you can exploit the buffer pools
for small LOBs while really large objects are treated as always.

True... but that's hardly an OO feature.

Naturally...

After fixing blocking and DRDA
inlining for LOBs in DB2 9.5 there's hope this OO advantage's days are
numbered.

In case I can vote here: I'm all for it. ;-)

--
Knut Stolze
DB2 z/OS Utilities Development
IBM Germany